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Rule changes, work stoppage, Offseason changes, Pitch Clock, New Uniforms

I don?t know...I don?t think you want a machine in the vicinity of a guy with a big club in his hands the machine is making calls against.

It would spice it up. Just to see what the robot does if the player or manager bumps him.
 
This is what I imagine when I hear robot ump

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Sox protest game against Rays after Cash:

Replaces starter with LHP, who retires one batter
Replaces LHP with RHP, moves LHP to 1B in the DH's slot in lineup, moves 1B to C (starting C to bench). RHP retires RHH
Replaces RHP with LHP-1B and brings player off bench to play 1B​

A little convoluted, but legal. Cora protested, not because of what Cash did, but because of what HPU CC Angel Hernandez couldn't do: explain it. It took 20 minutes to untangle what I could have explained in 20 seconds.

"Coach, when Cash moved the LHP to 1B, that eliminated the DH. And a pitcher can play a field position only once in the same inning. Got it? Good. Let's play ball."
 
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http://seamheads.com/blog/2019/07/30/how-jeter-can-be-like-teddy-ballgame/
How Derek Jeter Can Be Like Teddy Ballgame.
Seamheads

On July 25, 1966, Ted Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

On July 26, 2020, it?s a near certainty that former New York Yankees shortstop and current Miami Marlins chief executive officer and part owner Derek Jeter will join him.

What?s not nearly as clear is the kind of induction speech Jeter, who grew up in Kalamazoo, will give. But if he really wants to follow in the Splendid Splinter?s footsteps, all he has to do is invoke the memory of the social justice activism that Williams delivered 53 years ago, especially the 36 word closing part that turned heads:

I hope that someday Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson will be voted into the Hall of Fame as symbols of the great Negro Players who are not here only because they weren?t given the chance.

On that day, Williams went to bat for all the great persons of color who, because of the color of their skin, were not permitted to play our national pastime until the late Jackie Robinson broke that barrier in 1947.

Of course, baseball was just a mirror image of the institutional racism that affected this country seven plus decades ago. Some would say that racism still persists in sports as well as in life now. But that doesn?t mean it should.

Something else that shouldn?t be tolerated: ageism. That is especially true in a sport whose ratings depend on its older fans watching the games being played. According to data recently released by Street & Smith?s Sports Business Journal and Magna Global, the average age of a baseball viewer is 57, up from 52 in 2006. Of the top major sports, the national pastime has the oldest viewers, with 50 percent of its audience 55 or older, according to the Nielsen ratings. The average age of baseball viewers is 53, compared with 47 for the NFL and 37 for the NBA.

"Yet for a sport that relies heavily on its old-timers, Major League Baseball (MLB) sure treats its retired players disrespectfully. That is because there are 628 former players, such as 70-year-old Steve Grilli being hosed out of pensions by the league and the players? association. And how?s this for irony: his son, Jason Grilli also played in The Show and will receive an MLB pension. Both Grillis pitched for the Detroit Tigers".

Because they played before 1980, when the vesting rules changed, all the men like Steve Grilli have been getting since 2011 are non-qualified life annuities of $625 for every 43 game days they were on an active roster, up to $10,000. Meanwhile, the maximum IRS pension limit is $225,000.

Neither the league nor the union representing today?s players, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) want to do anything more to help these retirees; in fact, the nonqualified annuity payment cannot be passed on to a designated beneficiary. So when Steve Grilli passes on, the payment he is currently receiving won?t go to any family member, such as his wife, Kathleen.

Onetime Tigers second baseman Chuck Scrivener is in the same boat. So is Cass High School alum Carmen Fanzone. When both of those men pass, their payments pass with them. So Barbara Scrivener and Sue Raney Fanzone will each get squat.

To date, the MLBPA has been loath to divvy up anymore of the collective pie. Even though the players? welfare and benefits fund is worth more than $3.5 billion, the union?s executive director, former Tigers first baseman Tony Clark, has never commented about this situation, though many of the retirees are filing for bankruptcy at advanced ages, having banks foreclose on their homes and are so sickly and poor that they cannot afford adequate health care coverage.

In my opinion, Jeter is just the person to deliver a ringing indictment against baseball?s version of elder abuse. Known for his good nature, Jeter?s Turn 2 Foundation is devoted to supporting positive role models for children. As a result, in 2009, Jeter received both the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year Award and MLB?s Roberto Clemente Award for excellence in both baseball and community service. Five years later, Fortune Magazine named Jeter to its list of the World?s 50 Greatest Leaders. According to the magazine, Jeter is ?the type of role model player that even a Red Sox fan must grudgingly respect.?

Teddy Ballgame would no doubt agree.
 
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This is a crazy article Ron. Sounds like MLB is strong arming Minior league baseball. ?Shape up or ship out?. Nice article find Buddy !

from the article

"Put that way, this sounds like, in part at least, a massive nationwide shakedown of minor-league teams ? and inevitably the cities they play in ? to upgrade their stadiums to ?acceptable standards? on pain of losing their major-league affiliations otherwise. This gambit has been used before on a smaller scale ? most notably when the community-owned Toledo Mud Hens had to build a new stadium under threat of having their franchise yanked ? but announcing to the entire minor leagues that they?ll have to scramble to be one of the 120 teams allowed onto the lifeboat would be a stupendous escalation of the strategy."



That was the best thing that has happened to Downtown Toledo and the Toledo Mud Hens. Downtown Toledo was a ghost town before the stadium was built and the old Mud Hens Stadium was a shit hole. It's not like construction costs for minor league stadiums is almost $1 billion like MLB stadiums. In 2002 the cost of Fifth Third Field in Toledo was only $39M (about $55M in today's $$$)
 
Rule changes I’d like to see.

1. Eliminate base coaches.
2. Revert the save rule to pre 1973.
3. Three HB limit on pitchers. They are out when they hit batter #3. Eliminates the eject/warning.
4. Eliminate inter league play.
5. Eliminate the All-Star Game
6. Eliminate the extra Wild Card team
7. International rules for extra innings (start with one out, runner on second)
8. Enforce the 12-second rule for pitchers with the bases empty.
9. DH in every WS game.
10. Fire Joe West, Angel Hernandez, Phil Cuzzi, DB Bucknor, Doug Eddings (for starters)
 
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